Grammatical Relations

Question 1

How do languages indicate grammatical relations within a clause?

Answer 1

1. Fixed constituent Order
2. Case
3. Agreement

Question 2

What is a grammatical relation?

Answer 2

syntactic relation between a verbal head and argument (the main verb, and the other additional information in the clause)

Question 3

NOTES: grammatical relations mark the subject and the object of the arguments.

Question 4

Fixed word order

Answer 4

• subject and objects occur in a specific position in the sentence
• EX: in English the subject precedes the verb and the object comes after

Question 5

Case

Answer 5

• case marking
• particular affix (or inflectional form) to indicate either subject or object
• ex: in Latin, subjects = nominative case and objects = accusative case

Question 6

Agreement

Answer 6

• verb has an affix (or inflected form that indicates it’s linked to the Subject or Object

Question 7

Word Order

Answer 7

• S-V-O can be arranged differently
• influences how/which of the grammatical relation strategies can be used

Question 8

Word order

Answer 8

• can be fixed or flexible
• if the word order is free, then there needs to be case marking and/or agreement marking system
• NEED to be able to distinguish subject from object

Question 9

Word order Basic vs Marked. How to decide which one to use

Answer 9

1. Frequency
2. Neutrality
   - marked orders focuses on constituent

Question 10

Word order Trends

Answer 10

• SVO and SOV are most frequent
• S initial
• VERBS ARE ADJACENT TO OBJECTS